An offering to the Google gods.

Let’s say you arrive at your local bowling alley with these boys and all the balls are in use … .

By Adam S. Kibbe

I’ve nothing urgent or profound to share, alas, but the unholy duo below creeps me out, and the only way to move them down and off the ìfront pageî is by posting new entries — something the Wizard of Wacton has let languish. I do what I can.

Nature toys with us in these parts — elsewhere, too, probably, but Ptolemaic perspectives are irresistible. Barely a week ago, it was pushing 60. Then, last weekend, 6î+ of snow. Yesterday it was almost 70 — a blizzard can’t be far off.

And Michael wants to go camping.

One warm spring day some years ago, I and the Miller/Canning family left behind all the friends who wouldn’t come and drove up to Aziscohos, a revisiting of a site too cushy for the guys’ camping trip that first explored it, but ideal for an easy group getaway. Snow lingered in the shadows, but bright sun greeted us as we set up camp. And the April water was just as cold as the October lakes we usually experience.

I’m too wrapped up in work hyperdrive to yet contemplate my agreement to help Mike indoctrinate the gang of teenagers he proposes to expose to ìrealî camping. I don’t even know where we’re going (nor does he, in all likelihood), so I’ll probably just get into it there, a day or two before leaving, as usual.

But I won’t try to second guess the weather. I’ll bring a bathing suit and suntan lotion, and the usual 85 layers of warmth. And a map, in case we’re still making up our minds on the way, just as the weather here seems to be………

I’m piggybacking on Adam’s post (further shoving the unholy duo on down the page) to add this photo from that spring trip to Aziscohos. I talked myself into believing it too was an April excrusion, but I looked at the back of the photo and saw May of 1999. That means it was Memorial Day, when the snow lingered. Damn.

Two more pics:
Rope Swing
and
Pebble Beach

Condi Rice and Zorg from the Fifth Element

This Much I Do Remember

It was after dinner.
You were talking to me across the table
about something or other,
a greyhound you had seen that day
or a song you liked,

and I was looking past you
over your bare shoulder
at the three oranges lying
on the kitchen counter
next to the small electric bean grinder,
which was also orange,
and the orange and white cruets for vinegar and oil.

All of which converged
into a random still life,
so fastened together by the hasp of color,
and so fixed behind the animated
foreground of your
talking and smiling,
gesturing and pouring wine,
and the camber of your shoulders

that I could feel it being painted within me,
brushed on the wall of my skull,
while the tone of your voice
lifted and fell in its flight,
and the three oranges
remained fixed on the counter
the ways stars are said
to be fixed in the universe.

Then all the moments of the past
began to line up behind that moment
and all the moments to come
assembled in front of it in a long row,
giving me reason to believe
that this was a moment I had rescued
from the millions that rush out of sight
into a darkness behind the eyes.

Even after I have forgotten what year it is,
my middle name,
and the meaning of money,
I will still carry in my pocket
the small coin of that moment,
minted in the kingdom
that we pace through every day.

–Billy Collins

I don’t know about rakkity, here pictured with the future Mrs. rakkity in 1977, but I sure wish he still had that shirt.
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The Wedding- Tree Growers Meadow – 1978


Diane, Molly, the happy husband and his blushing bride (this will teach rakkity to send me photos without annotation).
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Mike, Ed, Beth, Kathy, Beth’s sister, and the Justice of the Peace
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My first wedding, my first and only best man role and my first toast. I don’t know about the happy couple, but I was one proud guy.
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Willow last night with the jazz saxophonist, whom I believe is married to the guitarist. I offered to break our Friday night routine, but Diane claimed she had been dreaming of sushi with a bowl of white rice.

I’ve been searching for prints of rakkity, and this all I can find so far. Back when he lived with us on Beacon St. in Somerville. Beth to his left, Bill Connet to his right, and Keiko, Peter’s girlfriend across the table.
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Mrs. rakkity.
Sorry Mrs., I know this isn’t the most flattering photo but it’s better than the one of you on our infamous whale hunt, bundled in a blanket, a pale shade of green, doing your best not to become an over-the-sider.
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Dash Ruthenburg
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Dash’s dad.
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Bill Connet, Patti and Diane. I’m not sure, but I think Diane or maybe Susan made that quilt.
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I had to add another of Diane as Glen Close in Fatal Attraction. Next to her is Karen Schiff and “Speed Freak.”
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Peter, Diane, Eileen Foley, and Linda.
One of my all time favorites…taken when we moved from Linda’s house on High St. to Central.
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Dan (“toothpick”) and Greg, Somerville, 19 something something. We stil have Patti’s hanging macrame plant holder, but the bell is gone. Diane made a dress of the same material as those curtains and somewhere I have a photo of her standing in front of the living room windows, with the huge avocado to her right.
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Matt has a snow imposed, two hour school opening delay. Not what he hoped for, but better than nothing.